


Where It Went Wrong

by Morgana



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in his cage, Lucifer tries to figure things out</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where It Went Wrong

He just couldn't understand. He'd been so careful, so meticulous, thinking each step through, going over and over his plan. Every possible weaknesses had been picked apart, every potential pitfall examined as closely as possible to ensure his ultimate success. Yet here he was, right back where he'd started, beaten and cast down once more. How could this have happened to him?

For months, Lucifer brooded over his failure, unable to let go of the questions that nagged at him. He ignored Michael and the other inhabitants of his cage, leaving them to their own devices while he slipped away to the darkest corner of his prison to turn the full force of his formidable intellect on the matter. It was still difficult to believe that he'd actually failed. And worse, that it hadn't been Michael who defeated him, but a human. His _vessel_ , of all things!

How had he done it? That was the enduring question, how he'd gotten the strength to break free of the stranglehold Lucifer had on his mind. He knew he'd won the mental battle, had felt the boy's will give beneath his assault, but somehow he'd fought back, somehow he'd wrested control back long enough to fling them both into the cage. And the _how_ of it was driving Lucifer mad.

It took a chance comment from Michael's vessel to show him where he'd gone wrong. The boy was a strange one, solitary and sullen enough to make Lucifer wonder if he should've considered the youngest Winchester as an alternate vessel instead of wasting time on Nick, but there was an innocence there that was painful to look upon that told him he wouldn't have been as easy to win over as Nick had been. He reminded Lucifer of days before his Fall, when he'd still believed in his Father and Michael, before he'd learned the painful truth of what happened to those who dared think for themselves.

"I think I'm glad I didn't grow up with them." It was the first time in almost five years that any of his companions had actually spoken to him and the novelty of it was enough to catch his attention. Lucifer turned around, regarding the boy with open curiosity, silently prompting him to continue with a wave of his hand. "I remember wanting a family, even asked my mom for a brother or sister, but Sam and Dean... they're different, you know? Not like anybody else I've ever known. I mean, it's almost like they're not - like they're not complete without each other. Like they're both just half of a whole person."

Half of a person. Lucifer thought about that, turning the idea over in his mind for the next few months. He began watching Sam Winchester, studying him with the intense focus that he'd previously only given to his own plans. When they'd plummeted back into the cage, he'd withdrawn from the human, yanking away from him with a vicious wrench that was intended to punish him for his victory. By rights, Sam Winchester's soul should have been shredded but somehow... somehow it wasn't.

What it was, Lucifer realized somewhere in the second decade of study, was suffering. But it wasn't like the suffering of most souls in Hell, whose pained cries Lucifer had long ago grown deaf to. No, this was something else entirely; it was a yearning, a silent, tortured scream of a being torn away from that which had given its entire existence meaning. It was, he thought uncomfortably, almost like his own agony when he'd been hurled down from Heaven at his brother's hand. But that was ridiculous. Humans couldn't love like angels - how could they hurt like them as well?

It was a question worthy of further investigation. Lucifer found himself drawn to the tiny remnant of humanity that lingered in his cage long after its brother had faded into the darkness that surrounded them. Like Michael, the human had never spoken, but the unceasing wailing of its pain blended with Michael's to form a strange sort of song, a symphony of unending agony that Lucifer had thought was known only to him. For a little while, he simply sat and marveled at the sounds of their grief, amazed at the human's ability to mourn the world he had lost to the same all-consuming degree that the angels mourned their exile from Heaven. The world was beautiful, Lucifer would grant him that, but how could it ever compare with his Father's home?

He turned his attention to quieting their cries, seeking to ease their grief in some way. Women, food, drink, music... Lucifer summoned all those things which had so intrigued him during his time on Earth, those things which humans seemed so enamored of, but nothing worked. Neither the sword and armor he created for Michael or the gleaming black car he presented Sam Winchester with silenced them - if anything, they grew more distraught. Lucifer thought back on his own first days in the cage, of the echoing loneliness that had threatened to overwhelm him, and it was then that he remembered the long-ago words of the bastard Winchester child: _'They're not complete without each other.'_

The longer he thought about those words, the more he wondered if perhaps they were the key to everything, from his defeat to this human soul's suffering. An attempt to ask Michael left him with nothing, for Michael was too locked in his own despair to notice anything around him, so Lucifer turned his full attention, once more, to Sam Winchester. He could hardly believe it, but this insignificant scrap of humanity had awakened a strange curiosity, a need to know, to understand. The solution was slow in coming, preposterous in nature, and unthinkable in execution, yet tantalizing enough to make him wish to attempt it. In the end, it was disgustingly simple. Once he managed to silence the soul long enough to present his proposition, his plan was accepted almost immediately. From there, a stolen bit of Michael's Grace was enough to slip the two of them past the weakened locks that had never been completely closed, and they were winging their way upward. Building a body proved a little more difficult, but Sam Winchester had clung to a strong image of himself, which aided him as he drew bits and pieces from the dust and assembled them once again. Then, at last, it was ready.

Lucifer pressed the soul into the form that lay still and silent on the graveyard earth and waited for the eyes to open and the mouth to form one soundless word before he followed it. _Dean._ The word echoed in his mind, the fragmented whisper of the soul's desire an aching need for his brother's touch, but Lucifer silenced it easily. There would be time for that later - first he must learn to walk the earth as Sam Winchester, and then he could turn his attention to that brother of his and finally get the answers to those questions that had been bothering him for so long.


End file.
